Posts tagged ‘SF’

We return back to Sharp Giants after the brief break. For those of you who haven’t been following the serial, you can go here to read the first installment. Once again i appologise for being late this week, I will be posting on time for the next few weeks which, I hope, will take us to the conclusion of The Sharp Giants.

Dancer was sitting alone in the captain’s bedroom. The air felt heavy, as if she were still wearing her suit. Everything was pressing against her. She had spent the night taking care of Hibbard’s body with Kendrick. They had intended to bury him, but the ground had been too hard and in the end they laid his body down on the surface and stacked loose rocks over him. Dancer had wanted to place a cross as a headstone, but Kendrick had refused to let her.

“He wasn’t religious.” He’d said as if talking about a distant and unloved relative, “and besides we don’t have anything with which to make a cross. He wouldn’t want to cause a fuss and interrupt the mission. The best thing we can do for him now is to complete our job and ensure he’s remembered for our success.”

Dancer looked down at the pile of rocks, a pang of pain rifling through her chest. “He was fine when we left. I don’t understand how he could have gone downhill so quickly. Just as we got to the Sharp Giants. He didn’t even get to see them.”

Unfortunately I’ve been with out the internet for a few weeks, which was why I was not able to post last Saturday and why I’m bringing you a story a day late this week. I will continue The Sharp Giants as soon as possible, but for now please enjoy a story that was previously posted on my own blog. I apologise for those who are following The Sharp Giants as I know I’ve been keeping you waiting for sometime now for the story to continue. I will endeavour to return to regular weekly postings for that story until its conclusion.

Falfurth arched his back, his hands firmly grasping his hips as he felt his vertebra slowly ease. He hated the long journeys on the sleeper train. The beds were hard and uncomfortable and the lack of overhead room always ensured he had to lie flat rather than prop up his back with a pillow, as he usually did. Why did they need to talk to him today? If they’d given him more time he could have waited for the biweekly shuttle to take him to the capital, but they had insisted he arrive as soon as possible. So he had jumped on the first express train he could and had spent the night lying awake in the unforgiving little cubbyhole the train operators had the gall to call a bed.

A man in his position forced to travel with lesser people, it was almost too much to bare. Of course, things had been different lately, the classes were forever getting blurred. Movements such as the ‘pro rights for ground dwellers’ had been causing unrest on the political scene. Apparently, according to their propaganda, it wasn’t enough to be born better than everyone else these days, you had to earn your rightful place instead.

“The detail is incredible, there is almost no wear at all.” Said Dancer as she studied the belly of the first Giant. There were three statues in the cavern all depicting the same strange creature, but none of them were identical and each had its own idiosyncrasies in construction. They all faced in one direction, but were not arranged in any discernible pattern. In fact their positions looked casual, almost transient in their placement as if they were in the process of being moved.

Dancer was on her back underneath the largest of the three sculptures, the first one that Portillo had seen. While from a distance the body of the creature had appeared to be as smooth as polished marble, up close she could see thousands of tiny etched lines. Hundreds and hundreds of tiny shield-shaped scales covering the whole of the body. She stroked her gloved hand along the stone stomach. The scales were so small and delicate that she could not feel them through her gloves. She longed to take them off and touch her skin to the stone. She wanted to feel its texture, its temperature, everything about it. “What do you think it is? A sea monster, some sort of lizard, or one of them? Could this really be what Martians looked like?”